SteuerGo FAQs

Can I also claim travel expenses for cycling?

Many employees use a bicycle for commuting to work and occasionally for off-site work. The question is what you can claim as work-related expenses for tax purposes in this case.

Commutes between home and primary workplace
These journeys can be claimed as work-related expenses using the distance allowance of 30 cents per kilometre (38 cents from the 21st kilometre). The type of transport does not matter, so bicycles are also eligible.

Journeys to a fixed meeting point
Some employees do not have a "primary workplace" but must report to a fixed meeting point on the instructions of their employer and start work from there or travel to different work locations. Such meeting points include vehicle depots for professional drivers, tram drivers, taxi drivers, train drivers, train attendants, etc., who always take over their vehicle at the same place.

These can also be meeting points to continue to work sites with a company vehicle, e.g. car park, meeting point at company headquarters to continue to construction sites. Since 2014, you can claim bicycle journeys to a fixed meeting point with the distance allowance of 30 cents per kilometre (38 cents from the 21st kilometre). Meal allowances can also be claimed since 2014.

 

Currently, the Federal Fiscal Court has made an interesting decision on the subject of "journeys to the meeting point". It states: If the meeting point is not typically visited daily for work, the journeys there can be deducted at business travel rates and not just with the distance allowance (BFH ruling of 19.4.2021, VI R 6/19). In advance: The BFH ruling is not easy to digest, but construction workers who frequently change construction sites should read the explanations carefully, as they can save real money.

• The case: The claimant works as a construction machine operator. He travelled to the respective construction sites from a specific meeting point with a company vehicle, according to an internal company instruction. This applied to both journeys with daily return and journeys to other work locations where the claimant stayed overnight for several days. The assignments on remote construction sites usually lasted the entire week. The tax office only considered the journeys to the respective meeting point with the distance allowance, while the claimant claimed the business travel rate of 0.30 EUR per kilometre driven. The BFH did not make a final decision but referred the case back to the lower court. However, it gave the court important guidance.
• If the meeting point is typically visited daily for work, the journeys there can only be deducted with the distance allowance. A typical daily visit to the meeting point is not sufficient to apply the commuter allowance. The BFH thus makes a strange distinction that only becomes clear at second glance.
• Typically daily visits mean that the employee is actually supposed to visit the meeting point daily to get to the construction sites from there. The employer's instructions and the planned events are decisive. Although the employee does not have to visit the meeting point every working day, they must do so with such regularity that training, unplanned assignments, or multi-day assignments on construction sites with overnight stays are the exception. It is crucial whether it is clear from the outset that the employee is only to be deployed on one-day construction sites. The employer's company structure can also play a role here.
• If the employee is more frequently deployed on multi-day remote construction sites, there is no typical daily visit to the employer's meeting point. It is only typically visited for onward travel ("daily travel") to the construction sites. In this case, the costs are to be considered at 0.30 EUR per kilometre driven. Again, the assessment is not based on a retrospective view of events but on the employer's planned deployment of the employee.

 

Journeys as part of off-site work
If business trips or off-site appointments are made by bicycle, no allowance can be claimed. However, the actual expenses incurred, e.g. purchase costs spread over the period of use, according to the proportion of business use, can still be claimed. However, this calculation is quite laborious.

SteuerGo: If business trips are made with an electric bicycle, a distinction must be made as to whether the bicycle is legally classified as a bicycle (pedelec) or as a motor vehicle (S-pedelec, e-bike). The latter are electric bicycles whose motor also supports speeds over 25 kilometres per hour. In this case, you can claim the business travel allowance of 20 cents per km.